The current software environment consists of a myriad of unrelated software applications which complement each other and sometimes overlap each other. Although there are integrated suites (like MS Office™), they are due more to the efforts of one company (Microsoft™) than the desires of the user community. The user community has reduced control of the features of each packaged software: although the user buys the software for a particular need or needs, most of the time the user ends up with additional features because of a belief that they might be needed in the future or just because the user does not have the option to exclude these features, due to the integrated suite packaging. This means that the user often pays more than is needed to obtain the applications they require. The result is an unnecessary bloated software and environment that drags the performance of the user computer and penalizes the user both financially and otherwise.
For a business, the result is the need to spend more in hardware (computers with more powerful CPU and more memory) to achieve efficiency that would be achievable with simpler applications tailored to the needs of the business. There is also a need to spend even more in software licenses and upgrades for features that the business or user does not need (or worse, does not know if it really needs them) and the increasing cost of complex management of licenses and upgrades. On top of that, the user's mobile devices (laptops, cell phones, Blackberry's, PDA's) add another dimension to the complexity of management besides adding the burden of keeping files in sync between the mobile and fixed devices.
The retail user and small business which do not possess specific IT groups to support them as does the big business suffer even more since the license price is much higher and most of the time they do not have the support to choose the best product and they do not have the attention from the software vendors that big corporations have.
What is instead needed is a system in which software is conveniently provided to users on-demand. Ideally, such a system would permit the user to access only that particular software that he or she needs, when he or she needs it.